$2,093,568 to be exact in our primary portfolios, the paired Long-Term Portrfolio (LTP) and the Short-Term Portfolio (STP) whose job is to protect it. It's really nothing to crow about as we're actually DOWN $40,487 since our June Review (through mid-May) though these numbers are only through mid June and the month finished with quite a bang. We close our months on option expiration day, of course, so we won't really know how the first half went until after July 19th and, by the time I consolidate that into a review it will be August and it would sound silly to call that a mid-year review – so that's why I'm calling this one a mid-year review.
While semantics are fun, let's get back to talking about trading strategies: Our intention over the summer was to lock down our portfolios in neutral as $2.1M is up from our Jan, 2018 start with $500,000 in our LTP and $100,000 in the STP so, overall, we're up $1.5M (250%) in 18 months and, with China Trade still up in the air, I'd rather protect my $1.5M in gains than risk them trying to make another $150,000 (10%). That's one of the problems you have as you make more and more money – you spend a lot more time protecting your wealth, rather than concentrating on making more wealth.
That's why we like to have multiple virtual portfolios at PSW. The LTP/STP is where we keep the bulk of our investing capital and they follow a strategy that is constantly hedging to protect what we started with. Nonetheless, they can still make spectacular gains but this cycle we have a very odd situation in which we have usually guessed correctly when we have added and removed hedges in the STP, causing an unusual $600,000 gain in a portfolio that usually loses money while the LTP gains.
It's been a very unusual market with lots of dips and recoveries and that kind of suits our trading style perfectly as we tend to scale into positions, buying small, conservative spreads to begin and adding more and widening the spread on dips. Another strategy we use is rolling our profits and the leads to a lot of our big gains. For…
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